HardCloud

The computing industry has recently proposed the use of FPGAs as a way to improve performance and energy efficiency in modern cloud clusters. Unfortunately, using such FPGA clusters is a very hard and complex task. In this context, we present HardCloud a novel and simple mechanism to offload computation to the FPGAs available in the Intel HARP2 platform. HardCloud extends OpenMP directives in such a way that the FPGA becomes just another OpenMP acceleration device that can be used directly from any user program.

How it works

The version 4.0 of the OpenMP standard introduces new directives that
enable the transfer of computation to heterogeneous computing devices
(e.g. GPUs or DSP). We use this programming model to transfer
computation to the HARP2 platform or to an HARP2 simulator (for debug purpose).
This can be done using two modes as described below: (1) Offloading a pre-synthesized
module; and (2) Using HardCloud to synthesize C and offload the resulting module.

Offloading a pre-synthesized module

Here is a video demonstrating how to use the HardCloud for a pre-defined bitstream..

The example above shows the syntax that was adopted. As said in the video, the map(:to) clause indicates
the data that will be sent to the accelerator, while the map(:from) indicates the data that will be received from the accelerator as a result. The clause use(hrw) specifies that the annotated code block will use a pre-designed hardware, for example module (loopback), to do the computation instead of the C code following the annotation. The device(HARPSIM) clause indicates that the execution will be performed by the HARP2 simulator.
Optionally to HARPSIM, one can use the HARP device that instructs the
HardCloud to generate code for the real HARP instead of for the simulator.

Using HardCloud to synthesize C and offload the resulting module

Instead of using the module clause, to specify a pre-designed hardware module, a programmer can use the HardCloud synthesize clause to generate a new bitstream starting from C code. For example, by using the synthesize clause in the following annotated code, a C code matrix multiplication can be converted to OpenCL, followed to Verilog and finally synthesized as a hardware bitstream using the Intel FPGA SDK for OpenCL. HardCloud takes the resulting bitstream, automatically configures the HARP2 FPGA and finally runs the application.